Jeju Has Highest Proportion of Working Moms

The southern resort island of Jeju has the highest proportion of working mothers. Statistics Korea on Thursday said 76.9 percent of employed women on Jeju island have children.

Next are Gangwon Province with 62.5 percent, North Chungcheong Province with 62.5 percent and Gwangju with 61 percent.

The lowest proportion is in the industrial port city of Ulsan, where a lot of the jobs are traditional men's work, with 48.3 percent. Incheon (53.1 percent) and Gyeonggi Province (54.2 percent) also have low ratios of working mothers.

Areas with high rates of working mothers are either farming communities or home to a high proportion of small and mid-sized businesses where husbands and wives worked together. But Ulsan and Gyeonggi Province are home primarily to large factories.

But working mothers are often badly paid. The bulk or 43.6 percent of them earn between W1 million to W2 million a month (US$1=W1,095), while 12.4 percent earn less than W1 million.

Some 21.8 percent make W2-3 million, 12.6 percent W3-4 million and only 9.6 percent more than W4 million.